


The Dragon of Life

by Caligraphunky



Category: Xiaolin Showdown (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-04-26 21:29:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14410929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caligraphunky/pseuds/Caligraphunky
Summary: Raimundo feels the yoke of leadership both on and off the battlefield, but never let it be said he doesn't know a bad omen when he sees one. A mystical dragon egg and a particularly nasty Shen Gong Wu on their own would have been fine, but together they create a challenge like the Xiaolin Dragons have never faced before...One that threatens to overwhelm both Good and Evil.





	1. Standard Omen Procedure

_Deep in the heart of China sits the stately and elegant Spicer Manor on a well-tended patch of lawn and artfully-grown trees, a peaceful prosaic landscape that hides, oh-so-subtly, the evil machinations of the most infamous evil-doer the world has ever known: The one and only_ Jack Spicer!

 _Down, down into the basement, into his horrible dark domain you trek, but only at your own peril! If you aren’t invited, you’ll find yourself staring down the gun of a hundred...no, A THOUSAND JACKBOTS, ready and willing to tear you into shreds in his glorious service! And if you_ are _invited, if by some once-in-a-lifetime stroke of luck you are allowed to gaze at the works of_ Jack Spicer _, Evil Boy Genius, you will know that the dark plots he’s brewing-_

_Someone is brewing-_

_At 2:30 in the morning!-_

_IN MY KITCHEN!!!!-_

“Wuya! Waste your own coffee!”

Jack exploded into the kitchen, a flurry of papers billowing behind him. Wuya leaned over his kitchen counter, sipping the blackest coffee Jack had ever seen, and completely failed to react to show of fury.

“I like it like this. Anyway, Chase never buys the good stuff -And what’s this?” She noticed then an errant page flutter in front of her face and she snapped it out of the air as a spider would catch a butterfly in flight.

“Get _out of here_ ! I don’t want you to- Don’t read that! That’s private! It’s a rough draft! _You know that’s my favorite mug_!” Jack’s enraged flailing resembled a chimp’s, just as sure as if he’d been holding the Monkey Staff. He lunged at Wuya and she jabbed her foot out, the ball catching his solar plexus and shoved him backwards. She smiled in satisfaction, but even as he tried to catch his breath, Jack couldn’t help but notice the smile warp into mocking glee.

“Are you...writing your memoirs?”

“Give that back!”

Wuya cleared her throat and read aloud, still balancing perfectly on one foot. _“‘...For all my great and evil accomplishments, the victories that I’ve had on the basketball court taste the sweetest.’_ Do you mean the time you lost the Showdown in New York or the games you lose against your own Ring of Nine Dragons clones?”

“You...you weren’t with me every time I balled!” She pulled her foot away, and Jack crumpled to the ground before grabbing at his ruined autobiography. His cheeks were flush in equal parts anger and the kick to his chest. “What are you even doing here? By the way, I can see up your-”

Wuya put her foot down to the floor. Hard. On top of Jack’s hand. Waiting for him to stop screaming gave her ample time to snatch up some choice pages, fold them, and tuck them into her inner pockets. She and Hannibal would get a kick out of them later, but for now she simply sneered down at him.

“I’m here because even your evil senses aren’t too numb to realize the truth: The monks have grown too strong. The Heylin are losing.”

Jack pulled his smarting hand up to his mouth, in what Wuya would call a deeply uncharacteristic moment of reflection on Jack’s part and what Jack would call trying to recall any one thing through the concussed haze of their last fight. He remembered with crystal clarity the bulk of the Heylin forces, lined up at the doors of the Xiaolin temple, the opening explosion of a Jackbot ripping through the peaceful afternoon silence. He remembered the monks staring them down, Raimundo dressed in black and red robes Jack had never seen before (and that he would never admit he found pretty cool.)

He also remembered, with significantly less clarity, the fight, which seemed to have ended in less than a hour with a pile of broken teeth, dragon scales, cat fur both domestic and exotic, bruised bean flesh, and the now-typical bitter accusations of failure and vows never to work together again. The Heylin had, in short, been trounced.

“W-well...uh...so what if we are?!” said Jack, tamping down the touched feeling he had to be included in by Wuya as Heylin, “we just end up being independent...evil...contractors!”

Wuya’s face suggested that she was about to reject that term quite violently and she hauled him up to shake him by the straps of his undershirt. “Shut your miserable face and listen! Chase and I have one last plan...”

She turned her head to the refrigerator, on the top of which sat a jet black crow.

Jack waved at it.

“And we have a lot of planning to do! Tell me Jack...have you ever heard of the _Dragon of Life_?”

_Meanwhile, miles away…_

If 2:30 AM was a person, Raimundo would have already declared them the Xiaolin’s greatest enemy and led the rest of the monks in a triumphant battle against them and taken all their Shen Gong Wu and punched them right in the face personally.

He sat, kneeling on a cushion and staring into a cup of bitter tea. A  scroll was rolled out in front of him, but he could barely read it when he was awake, much less in hours so wee they could barely be called part of the morning.

But Raimundo hadn’t stayed up to study. It was his fourth nightmare in a week.

And every time he spent the rest of the night awake, trying to find ways to stop the endless replay in his mind. He took a swig of tea, which went down the wrong tube, and Raimundo had to turn his head to avoid spitting all over the scroll before muffling his mouth with his elbow. That kind of thing could wake the whole temple and the last thing Raimundo wanted was company. Meditation takes a clear head, and he’s already at the disadvantage of spending the week only half-awake, but he can still put two and two together.

Things are changing. They aren’t changing fast enough, but also they’re changing too fast. The big standoff between the Xiaolin and the Heylin, the one that happened immediately after his promotion to Shoku Warrior, was three months ago and since then…

Nothing. Not a thing. No battles, no Wu sightings, no omens, good or bad...the most amount of downtime the monks had had up to this point was a little over two weeks. And it drove them so stir-crazy they had their biggest fight up to that point. So three months was costing them just about all their focus.

The monks dealt with it in different ways. Training and chores were the typical order of the day, but the more they trained without having anything to train for the less training seemed to do for them. Master Fung told them their restlessness was due to their youth and something like the only way to see the valley is to climb the mountain and absolutely nothing that made Raimundo feel any less undercut.

He was Shoku Warrior. He was the _leader._ And while the actual mechanics of how that happened still weren’t totally clear or even...linear in his mind, he did know this: He did not become leader of the monks only to tell them to sit around the temple all day.

Kimiko could master Goo Zombies Online. Clay could whittle until he cut his thumb off. Omi could practice Bear Riding Unicycle until he could do it in his sleep. And Raimundo would watch it all and…

“And then what?” Raimundo said, without realize he’d said it out loud until he got an answer.

“And then what...what, Raimundo?” Omi peered in the door, holding a candle above his bald head? “While it is most inspiring to see our leader up studying so diligently, should you not also be striving to get adequate sleep so your head can be clear for future challenges?”

Raimundo rolled his eyes, literally waving Omi off. “Eh, couldn’t sleep anyway. Why not make the most of it?”

Surprisingly, Omi didn’t seem to buy it. There was a time when Omi would have believed anything Raimundo told him if he added a slightly sarcastic tone and a casual shrug, but he simply tilted his head.

“There is something troubling you.”

“What?”

Omi knelt on the cushion beside Raimundo, cloud-patterned pajamas settling on the silk.

“You are doing this thing...breezing me off?”

“Blowing you off.”

“That too. You do it when you do not wish to talk. Did you not realize?”

“Mmm…” Maybe he realized a little, but that still didn’t mean Rai wanted to talk. Too late, too tired, too...Omi. Too everything right now. “Look, it’s just this scroll, OK?  I can’t make heads or tails of it and it’s been keeping me up.”

It wasn’t a lie, and if it had been, it wouldn’t have been a good one, at least not if the object was to get rid of Omi. Instead, he focused his attention on the scroll on the floor in front of them.

“Ah, then allow me to assist you my sleepless friend! When it comes to scrolls there is no one who decipher this...this...what is this?”

Omi turned the scroll to the side. Then to the other. He unrolled it a bit more. Then he stood and walked around it and Raimundo. Twice. He sat back down. He gently lifted the paper to check the other side.

“...This is illegible.”

“Told ya.”

Most of the scrolls in the temple were simple enough. Some of them were magic, the ink in the letters winding through the paper to form whatever language the reader spoke most fluently. Some of them were in ancient Chinese, which all the monks had learned the first two years they were there. The Shen Gong Wu scroll mostly used pictures. But this one was...weird. About the only thing Raimundo was prepared to say with certainty was that it was in Chinese, but it seemed to swap between ancient and modern, traditional and simplified, not just from page to page but in the middle of thoughts, and that was only when the script could be even be read. Chunks of it were apparently written by someone having a sneezing fit in the middle of an earthquake. A few words popped up over and over, like “dragon” and “cultivation” and “fate,” but nothing that made any real sense.

The only other thing on the scroll, sitting right in the middle, was an illustration of a dragon. Unlike the text, the dragon was impeccable. The delicate linework matched the dragon’s delicate, almost paper-thin frame. It would look more like a dragon-shaped kite if it weren’t for the massive intricate horns that emerged from its head and the intricate yellow patterns on its white scales.

Omi traced the lines of the ink with his fingers, captivated. “I have never seen the like of this scroll before. What is it?” Raimundo opened his mouth to speak, but it wasn’t his voice that sounded through the room.

“It is the scroll I was studying. The one I believe I told you not to touch, Raimundo?” Master Fung stood in the door, his face typically impossible to read.

“Shoku Warrior privilege?” said Rai with a sheepish chuckle. Omi made a guttural noise of irritation, but Rai didn’t look at him.

“I cannot fault your curiosity, Raimundo, but take care: Always keep one eye on the path ahead, or you may find yourself lost in the woods.”

Raimundo knew better than to argue the point. At least that one was easy. “Yes, Master Fung,” he said with a slight bow. Omi followed suit but, then looked up into Master Fung’s eyes.

“But... since we _have_ all seen it...”

Master Fung’s face stayed stoic as a rock, but Raimundo could have sworn he saw a twinkle in the old man’s eyes. “This scroll is has been a mystery to even the Xiaolin for-” Raimundo chimed in in chorus “-one thousand years.” Master Fung raised an eyebrow, and Omi giggled despite himself.

“What? Everything’s a thousand years with us!”

“Indeed,” Master Fung turned to roll the scroll back into the polished wood of it’s holder, “This scroll speaks of a grand and mystical dragon known only as Shòu, the Dragon of Life.”

“Is this a scaly dragon,” asked Omi, “or a warrior dragon?”

“Scaly.”

There was a pause. The three monks turned to the door to make sure Dojo wasn’t eavesdropping. Master Fung continued.

“It is known as the greatest and most glorious of all dragons that will ever exist and it is said that the fate of this dragon is tied to the fate of all life, good or evil, plant and animal, that that exists on earth.” He tucked the scroll under his arm. “But that is all we know.”

“So this dragon’s coming back?” Rai said through a stifled yawn. Now that he wasn’t fixated on the scroll, the late night was coming back to bite him.

“Perhaps.”

“ _Definitely_. For real, when do we ever get an omen that doesn’t come true the next day?”

Omi shuffled his feet. “With all due respect, Master Fung, he is not wrong..”

“...Indeed. But if we are to prepare for tomorrow, we must _rest_ for tomorrow.”

That was less a proverb than a pointed cue, and both Omi and Raimundo turned to leave.

“Raimundo, please stay one more moment.” Both monks turned. Fung smiled gently and clarified. “I wish to give our young leader tips on how to prepare tea.”

“Oh yes!” Said Omi, “Most wise! Now perhaps Raimundo’s tea will not taste like the water from Clay’s laundry!”

“Wha- Does not!”

“It does, but it will not now!” Omi’s matter-of-fact steps out of the room matched his tone and Raimundo stuck his tongue as he went, but he was distracted by Fung’s hand on his shoulder.

“72 degrees for white tea, 66 for green tea.”

“Uh, right. OK…?”

“And the Shadow of Fear is still in the vault, untouched.” Fung removed his hand and begin his trek to the temple library.

Behind him. Raimundo closed his eyes.


	2. The Fang of Shìxuè

Raimundo got another two hours of sleep before he woke up to the typical shuffling of the other monks. Same morning routine. Get up. Hang around for his turn for the bathroom. Outvote Kimiko on who gets it last (“Nobody’s waiting an hour and a half for you to do your makeup!” earned Rai a punch in the arm.) Get dressed. Make breakfast. Clean up breakfast. Morning chores. Workout. Meditation. The only major difference was that Raimundo got to...mostly announce when they were going to do what they were already doing.

He felt more like a life coach than a leader of elemental dragon warriors.

Master Fung hadn’t been much help, either. Or maybe had actually been incredibly helpful, who knows? That particular nuance of zen philosophy was never going to not be frustrating. All Master Fung had actually said was that Raimundo must lead and trust the others to follow. It wasn’t even a question, but somehow he felt like his answer -that doing what they’d done all along had worked out fine- was wrong. If he’d learned anything from the years at the temple, it was that you had to be tested before you knew what you were capable of.

Maybe this was a test on how prepared he’d be when, and maybe if, something actually happened, but all he knew right now was that if thinking too much was a duty of a leader, than he was pulling more than his fair share of weight.

Rai called a break from training- which was actually a pretty great perk of being Shoku Warrior- and lay down on the grass in the temple courtyard, arms tucked under his head and letting the sun beat on his face. It was sort of gratifying to watch the other monks following his lead. Kimiko sat next to him, cross-legged and typing furiously on her laptop, Clay on her other side with a sandwich, and Omi stretching as he walked towards them.

“What is with this guy?!” said Kimiko, brows furrowed as the sounds of Goo Zombies Online filled the tranquil afternoon. “Doesn’t he know when you join a guild you’re supposed to, you know, help the guild?”

“Someone acted like that at a rodeo they’d get tossed out before the bronko made its first buck,” said Clay, “Can’t ya block the varment?”

Omi, who’s grasp on the concept of video games was a lot more liquid, smacked his finger against the screen, covering the face of the xXx_theb0tman_xXx. “Yes! Drop blocks on the evil-doer’s head!”

“It’s just a griefer, Omi.” said Kimiko, with a lot more patience than Raimundo expected to have, “and remember what we talked about hovering fingers vs. touching fingers?” Omi sheepishly pulled his hand away from the screen. 

“Oh. Yes. My apologies. A...griefer? Grief-er? Someone who is...causing you grief?”

“Uh, yeah, actually!” Kimiko’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Clay tipped his hat. Rai had to admit, he didn’t expect Omi to get that one. Kimiko continued. “There’s a glitch in this game where if your guild-mate fires off a Homing Hat attack in a three frame window, it’ll override the parameters for attack priority, target another player’s hat instead and cancel both attacks.”

Omi put his hand to his chin in a thoughtful way, making an understanding little hmmm sound. And then another. And another.

“He’s gettin’ in Kimiko’s way on purpose,” Clay clarified.

“Oh! I mean, uh, yes, of course! I knew that!”

Raimundo turned his head away from them and closed his eyes. Maybe he was overthinking things...No, he already knew that. Maybe his mistake was in thinking the monks were feeling what he was feeling. They were acting like this was just ordinary downtime, or, heck, a summer vacation. If even Omi the Overachiever was taking this in stride, things couldn’t be all that ominous. They’d won, right? They’d taken on everything the Heylin had to offer and not only survived, but triumphed.

And if the others were worried about what was around the corner, they either weren’t showing it, making the best of it…

Or...they trust me to get them through it.

He turned his head from them and closed his eyes. He might be able to doze off right here, be refreshed for the rest of the day and maybe get through one night this week without-

“-undo. Hellooooo? Earth to Raimundo, are you there?”

“Whazzat?” Rai started and his eyes shot open. Kimiko stood up, eyes fixed on a point beyond the wall, where the source of an ungodly wheezing noise seemed to be tracing the outside.

“You can sleep through that!?” Kimiko shot him a look that was halfway between surprise and concern. 

“You’d’ve had to be conked out as my Uncle Jebediah after he pulled the tail on the prize stallion to miss it!” Clay took another bite of his sandwich. None of the monks were especially concerned, considering they knew the sound of a wheezing dispeptic dragon better than anyone on the planet, but as the noise grew closer it took on an edge of panic rather than exertion. Sure enough, Dojo rounded the corner as fast as his snake body could carry him.

“Wu alert! It’s a hot one!” He shouted, brandishing the scroll as if it was a live grenade, “Saddle up, kids, we’re burning daylight!”

“What is it, Doj-” but Omi didn’t get to finish before Dojo had slithered up his robes and smack his dragon nose against his face.

“Listen very, very carefully!” Dojo’s voice had a tone it only took for end-of-the-world affairs. Suddenly, he slithered out of Omi’s robe and into Kimiko’s. “We are gonna find this Wu!”

Then he leapt off of her and slithered around Clay’s hat, hanging over the brim to look him in the eyes. “We are gonna get this Wu!”

And finally, he threw himself around Raimundo’s shoulders. “And then we are gonna lock this Wu up in the vault in the basement and throw away the key and none of you are ever going to touch it again! Is that clear?!” 

“Whoa!” Raimundo snagged Dojo’s middle and yanked him off like an itchy scarf. “How bad could this Wu even be?”

Dojo hit the ground like an affronted spaghetti noodle before curling around the scroll and unrolling it.

“It’s the Fang of Shìxuè.” Dojo’s voice was grave as the Shen Gong Wu scroll swirled into form. “It allows whoever possess it to drain the life-force from it’s victim to be absorbed by the user. Not just your chi, but everything, until nothing is left of your opponent but a tiny pile of dust!” 

The monks were silent, watching the figures animate on the scroll. Just as Dojo said, one held the Fang in front of him, as a concentrated beam shot into the other. The second figure withered and dissolved.

Then, the first figured began to shake violently, before popping like a balloon. A small collective gasp emitted from the group of monks.

“Oh yeah!” said Dojo, “Not only that, but because no one body can withstand the energy of having two life-forces inside it at the same time, the user dissolves as well! Using this Wu even a little too much is mutually assured destruction! Not that any of you kids are going to use it ever! At all! Period! Not even a little question mark in parenthesis!”

“Sounds like evil’s gonna be all over that like a pack of bloodhounds at the barbeque cookoff,” said Clay. The Fang had already destroyed one thing: pretense. The super destructive Wu were never any fun to hunt and even less fun to keep safe. Raimundo’d been hoping for something to get them back in the groove and he could feel the mood curdling around him.

“So? Do your thing and we’ll do ours, dragon man!” Dojo did, leaping into the air and growing in size, letting the monks climb on. Raimundo had just gotten situated on his back when he felt Omi’s sharp little dagger-elbow in his side. 

“Look!” Omi whispered, pointing at Master Fung, who walked towards them with unmistakable purpose in his stride, “it is the scroll from last night!” 

Of course, because Kimiko and Clay were seated right behind him, they noticed where Omi was pointing and heard exactly what he said, but even if Omi hadn’t mentioned the scroll, it still would have been the first thing they saw. It was indeed the same one, but this time it glowed with a golden light, pulsing like a heartbeat. Dojo’s eyebrows shot up impossibly high.

“...Please tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

“I fear so, Dojo. The Scroll of Shòu wishes it’s presence known.”

“Oh, c’mon!” Dojo raised himself up on his arms, “This is all we need right now!”

Kimiko furrowed her eyebrows at the two boys in front of her. “‘What do you mean, ‘from last night?’”

“Raimundo was studying!” Omi announced, “Though it was very late! And Master Fung told him not to…”

“Tattletale!” Rai hissed. “Look, it was just sitting out so I had a little peek! You looked at it too!”

“Young monks,” said Master Fung, “when you return, we will discuss what this means. I fear the glowing of the scroll is a terrible omen.”

Dojo shrugged, almost jostling Omi off his back before Raimundo caught him. “It doesn’t have to be terrible! Could be great! That Shòu was always an unpredictable little...Anyway, it could even mean nothing at all, that scroll does just glow occasionally. You gotta see something a little bigger before you go around calling it an omen!”

“Like what?” asked Kim.

“Oh, I don’t remember! It’s been 1500 years!”

“So figure it out on the way,” Raimundo chimed in, impatient. “There’s a super dangerous Wu to get before the bad guys do!”

“Oh, yes! Excellent leadership voice, Raimundo!” said Omi.

“Omi, I don’t need you to-” 

“Uh, partners?” The alarm in Clay’s voice got everyone’s attention. The scroll was not simply pulsing, but flashing...Well, no, it was still pulsing but rapidly and brightly, almost white. Master Fung’s face suggested that even he had no idea what was going on. He held it out in front of him, moving to put it down.

“Oh yeah! I remember,” said Dojo, “It explo-”

And then the scroll exploded.


	3. Chain Reaction

Deep in Chase’s Lair, something else was exploding.

 _“It’s here!”_ Wuya’s scream echoed through the halls. Jack Spicer could hear the claws of Chase’s cats scraping as they fled the sound. “The Fang of Shìxuè has revealed itself!”

Jack leapt to his feet, letting his laptop clatter to the ground. It was good timing: User ur_flammableXOXO had just logged out of Good Zombies Online and Jack had proven that his bot was more than capable of exploiting the Hi-Hat glitch every time. “So, we’re moving out?”

“When Dragonbreath gets here.” Wuya impatiently stomped over to Jack’s jet. Jack followed her but he didn’t need his helipack to float today.

“I can’t believe Chase let me park _in his lair!_ ” he squealed. “This is the coolest thing ever!”

“Don’t get-”

“Did I squeal just then? Do you think he heard? OK, Jack, keep it together. Deep breaths. Look good for the Prince of Darkness!”

Wuya’s look could have melted a hole in the windshield. “You’d better. You’re only here because we need as many hands going for that Wu as possible. Did you look up the coordinates I gave you?”

“Uh, yeah, it’s some dinosaur museum in Wyoming.”

“Make yourself useful and find a floor map. We need to know where the T-Rexes are.”

All of a sudden, Jack went from deep breathing to _no_ breathing. “Ahh, Wuya...doncha remember the last time we messed with one of those? I don’t think-”

“The skeletons, idiot. Where else would it be hidden in a dinosaur museum?” Wuya glanced up at the ceiling. Jack didn’t even need to see what she was doing to _know._

“Do you want to get the Rio Reverso just in case- alright, alright, you don’t have to roll your eyes that hard! I get it!”

“Hmm-Oh! Oh, I do. Trust me Jack. You should savoir those exceedingly rare moments when people aren’t rolling their eyes at you.” Her gaze lingered on that spot for a brief second more, than she returned her attention to Jack.

“Whatever. I’ll remember that when I rule the world. What’s keeping Chase anyway?”

 _“Making sure everything was in place for the plan._ The Fang has activated the scroll’s curse, just as the prophecy foretold.”

There he was at the top of the stairs, larger than life, eyes gleaming out of the shadows. Chase Young stood at full attention, flanked on all sides by a phalanx of cats as if escorting him. Or perhaps he was escorting them.

“That’s still so cool,” Jack whispered.

“Uh-huh.” Wuya sniffed a little, “Sorry about this but...I just realized I have to use the little witch’s room.”

“You’re serious?” said Chase, scowling.

“I’ll just be one moment!” Wuya hissed, and leapt up the stairs.

Jack stood at attention, ridgid as a flag pole, grinning from ear to ear. Chase stared at him for a moment.

“At ease?”

Jack relaxed everything but his smile.

“Good to be working with ya again, Chase!”

Chase was silent.

“Uh...how’re your cats? The hold of the ship is empty! Just like you asked! For the cats, right? Can’t wait t-to see them in action!”

More silence. A pointed glare. Jack sensed he was losing control of the situation.

“...So! Fang of Shìxuè. Kind of an evil one this time, huh? Who knew Dashi was that intense, amiright? Didn’t really think you were into Wu, but this one’s a real...barn-burner, huh?”

This got a response. Chase’s face came over in contemplation and he folded his hands in front of him.

“...This Wu is different, yes, but it was not _intended_ to be evil. Still, it rightfully belongs to me.”

“Wha- How do you figure that?! I mean, maybe the Wu rightfully belongs to me!” Jack exclaimed, then remembered who he was talking to and shrank back as if afraid of being struck. “Uh, I mean...j-just curious?”

“Because,” said Chase, folding his arms, “I was the one who asked Dashi to make it.”

The long-ago look on his face melted into a smirk. Jack’s mouth was hanging down to his collar.

“Open the hatch, worm,” said Chase, “We’ll leave as soon as Wuya returns.”

For her part, Wuya went upstairs, hung a left, opened the door to the bathroom and spied...a crow sitting atop the door frame.

“Think very carefully about what you show your master,” she said. “ _Very_ carefully.” The crow considered this, and then flew off down the hall.

Wuya ducked into the restroom, and then gracefully slipped out the window, hanging on with one hand.

“Did you get all that?”

Out of the shadows hopped Ying-Ying, Hannibal Roy Bean perched atop the bird’s back.

“All ready to go, my dear. The Scroll of Shòu just blew, right in the Xiaolin’s face, and the Egg of Life should be ripe for the pickin’.“

Wuya grinned. “Excellent!”

“When are we goin’ to pick up the little squirt?”

“We aren’t.”

Hannibal’s mouth turned down at the corners. “You mean we’re just letting the monks keep it?”

“Don’t get your vines in a twist. We don’t need the _egg_ , we need the _dragon._ I mean, taking care of a baby at my age? Chase is cranky enough and, I couldn’t get near enough beauty sleep!”

Hannibal cocked his head to the side. His face softened, but it never reached his eyes.. “Well now, we can’t have that. You know I’d hate to see your evil wither away, beautiful.” He winked at her, almost demure. “I don’t think we could provide the right environment to raise up a little dragon strong and powerful, anyhow.”

“Xiaolin daycare it is then! Don’t worry. As long as _someone_ evil has the Fang, we’re in business.” She swung herself up to the windowsill and then stopped. She dug into her dress and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “Oh yes, before I forget...A little reading material for your flight.”

Hannibal gripped the pages in confusion, and read aloud.

 _“‘It won’t surprise you to learn that very first Shen Gong Wu to reveal itself, the Mantis Flip Coin, was also my very first victory! That was the first time I met the Xiaolin monks, a truly unimpressive group: A cheeseball, a chick, a punk, and a hayseed! No match for Jack Spicer, but this would not be the last time they tried…’”_ Confusion melted into delight. “Wuya, once again you’ve gone above and beyond the call of evil.”

“I thought you’d get a kick out of it. I hope you get to chapter 10. It’s my favorite.”

Hannibal flipped through the stack. “‘Wuya’s Rise to Power,’ hmm? Well, let’s hope we don’t have to repeat chapter 11.”

Ying-Ying flew off before Wuya could respond. She had to admit, no one was finer than Bean at the final riposte. She climbed back through the window, clearing the length of the bathroom in two strides. Then she thought better of it, flushed for authenticity, and went to take her place by Chase’s side.


	4. Golden Dust

Raimundo came to in a pile of monk limbs and not quite enough sensation to determine which ones were his. The only clue he had to how long he’d been out were the pins and needles in his arms, legs, face, torso…His vision swam into focus and, after a few tries, he wrenched an arm free and held it up to his face to block the sun, but it did nothing for the thousand points of light sparkling in his eyes.

“OK,” said Kimiko through a groan, “Normally I’m all for glitter, but even I know when enough’s enough.”

Raimundo didn’t quite know what she meant until his eyes came back into focus. What he’d taken for stars in his eyes was actually golden dust all over his hand, every little individual sparkle leaving behind a tingling feeling. As the tangle unraveled into four separate monks, he could see that they were all covered, head to toe, in sparkles.

Omi was the first out of the pile, pulling himself out from between Raimundo and Clay, then turning this way and that to inspect himself. “Ooh! I look as wonderous on the outside as I am on the inside!”

“Layin’ the mysticism on thick, ain’t it?” He plucked his hat off his head and shook it roughly, scattering golden dust into the air like pollen. They flickered in the air for a moment and vanished. Dojo on the ground next to him, the impact having caused him to shrink.

“Nah...that is.” Dojo jabbed a claw towards where Master Fung was standing a moment ago. Well, OK, he was still standing in exactly the same position he’d been in when it blew, just now he was covered in dust. It shook out of his beard when he spoke.

“Indeed...we have been blessed with the egg of the Dragon of Life.”

“Big blessing,” Raimundo muttered, sizing up the egg. It sat in the middle of a sigil -Raimundo realized then that the explosion had carved it a good inch and a half into the tile- the grooves of which were filled with a flowing golden energy that seemed to carry itself into and out of the giant egg, as if were pumping blood.

Omi approached first. The egg was about a half-size bigger than he was.

“Greetings, oh great Dragon of Life! My name is Omi. I welcome you to-” He placed his hand on the egg. His words died in the air. He stood rigid, eyes wide and teeth chattering as if he were being electrocuted. 

Raimundo bolted forward and yanked Omi away by his shoulders, who fell backwards to the ground, rubbing his forehead. “Oooh...Shòu’s handshakes are most intense.” 

Kimiko joined then on the other side of Raimundo, kneeling down to check on Omi. “Are you hurt?”

Omi shook his head. “No...I do not believe it meant harm. Perhaps...the dragon was simply too excited? Like Dojo when Master Fung comes back with jerky snacks.” Dojo’s indignant huff went entirely ignored.

“Master Fung,” said Clay thoughtfully, still brushing gold dust off his pants, “does this mean that the Fang of Shìxuè and the Dragon of Life are connected?” Master Fung simply glanced at Dojo, who shrugged.

“Yes?” said Dojo, “Kind of? Look, I don’t know the whole story, but they do have something to do with each other.”

Raimundo took stock. They had a super-dangerous freshly activated Shen Gong Wu and they’d already lost a lot of valuable time to go get it. They had an extremely mystical dragon egg that seemed like it could potentially be responsible for all life on earth. Those two things may have some kind of magical link. And it would probably be best if the Xiaolin had both of them.

Time to get into Leader Mode. What was happening before was Dazed and Maybe a Little Concussed Mode, but this? Leader Mode.

“Team, team! We’ve lost way too much time on this magic egg thing! Master Fung, take it somewhere safe while we go for the Fang...Uh, that is-”

For one second, Raimundo wondered if he’d overstepped a boundary giving him an order, but Master Fung simply bowed, which was about the weirdest feeling he could have imagined. It wasn’t lost on the other monks either. Raimundo could hear whispering behind him.

...Which gave way to giggling. 

“...What?”

“Sorry, Rai,” said Kimiko, with a giggle, “but you’ve got glitter all over your butt.”

Omi doubled over in laughter. Clay covered his mouth with his hat, but the wide grin on his face was obvious.

“And on that note of dignity, we’re off!” Dojo grew to flying size, scooping the four monks onto his back and soaring into the sky, the momentum shaking off the rest of the gold dust.

...Why was it that out of all of everything that happened that morning, the thing that stuck in Raimundo’s mind was glitter butt?  
Not like Kim meant anything by it. Leading the team was an honor, but he’d never wanted to be more “Leader” than “Friend.” They still respected him, it was just teasing, like he’d do to any of them if they’d ended up with a golden backside.

Right.

“Dojo, what is the connection between this Dragon of Life and the Fang of Shìxuè?” asked Omi once they’d leveled out.

“Yeah, why would Dashi make something so...evil?” 

“Yeesh, Kim, it’s not like that!” Dojo glanced back over his shoulder, “The Fang was just an experiment that didn’t work out! In, ya’know, a horrible disastrous way. Thaaaaaat nearly destroyed Dashi’s sanity.”

Dojo had everyone’s attention, he cleared his throat and continued.

“What, you think that the Xiaolin always knew how to extend their lifespans? Cause lemmie tell ya, that little trick was not easy to figure out! The Fang was just the Xiaolin’s earliest shot at it. Don’t ask me why, but Master Dashi got it into his head to make a Shen Gong Wu just for that purpose.”

He put his tongue into his big green cheek, staring upwards in thought. Raimundo could feel Dojo lilt upwards ever so slightly.

“You kids are way too young to start making Wu, but I’ll tell ya this much: You can’t just make Wu out of just anything...Er, despite appearances. No, you need an object that will accept the amount of power you’ll be putting into it. And to put power in it, you need a power source.”

Clay spoke up, one hand on his hat to keep it on his head. “You’re sayin’ this fang and the power is from the Dragon of Life?”

“Only really sure about the tooth. See, getting a fang from a dragon is a huge honor. A fang from a dragon that powerful can withstand magic that would tear the universe itself apart. A dragon has to recognize you as worthy of it. And Shòu? Nobody before had ever been chosen by him. Grand Master Dashi was the most likely candidate because, you know, Grand Master.

So Dashi made a solo pilgrimage to find him and get the fang. We were waiting at the temple for two weeks before there was this huge explosion that nearly shook the temple down to the foundation! We had no idea what happened until we got a runner from a nearby village another week later. They’d fished Dashi out of their town’s well, dazed and confused, with the Fang and the Scroll of Shòu. He never told us what happened that day, just that all Xiaolin past and future had been cursed for 1000 years.”

“Lemmie guess...and that curse,” said Raimundo with a sigh “is paying off today.”

“Look, I hate to say it, but you kids are probably the unluckiest monks the Xiaolin have ever had.” Dojo tipped his nose down towards the ground and the plains of Wyoming came into focus. 

So did the screams from the Dinosaur Center. Jackbots buzzed around the building like angry hornets, firing lasers through the windows. People, tourists and school groups and scientists, fled the building like scattering mice.

“Let’s do what-” Raimundo was interrupted by Omi’s hand on his shoulder.

“We must help them! Inspire us, Raimundo! Tap into your excellent leadership skills and lead us to defeat the enemy in a most humiliating fashion!”

“-we...do...best. Thanks, Omi?” Rai looked at him askance for a moment, and then jumped off Dojo and through the window, closely followed by his team.

Jack Spicer stood on top of a glass display of trilobites, pointing to every large tooth-y skull in the place. “Bring me every fang in the place, baby! I want to see that Wu!” Off to the side, Chase and Wuya watched with no small amount of amusement.

“I must say, you were right,” said Chase, “He makes an excellent dogsbody when he’s not allowed to make his own decisions!” That wrenched a chuckle out of Wuya. Jack wheeled around.

“I am totally making my own decisions!” he screamed, stepping down onto the pile of fangs,“I decided to work with you!”

Chase frowned.

“B-because you’re cool and powerful! And super evil. That’s why...I..um, .decided.”

Raimundo decided to take mercy- Well, “mercy”- on Jack and distract them by wrecking as many bots as he could on the way to the pile. Nothing like smashing apart a robot with your bare hands for re-aligning yourself in the universe, like a really good yoga workout.

“Yeah, like I’m deciding to kick your butts!” He turned to Dojo and whispered “Signal when you find the Wu.”

“Me?” he responded from his spot curled around Raimundo’s ankle, “you guys aren’t gonna keep your eye out?”

“You’re the dragon around here. You’d know the difference between fangs better than any of us.”

“...Fair point. But you better keep the evil off my tail!” Dojo slithered off to hunt. Omi pumped his fist.

“Excellent call, Raimundo! We will be more useful in battle!”

“...Omi, are you gonna do this cheerleader act the whole-”

Chase Young leaped into the air, landing in front of the four monks. All of them struck battle poses.

“Leave now, young warriors,” he said, “This Shen Gong Wu is mine by rights.”

“Now you’re suddenly into Wu?” Kimiko asked.

“The circumstances of this one are unique. I alone know it’s full potential and how to tap it. I assure you, this is not a responsibility I take lightly.”

Jungle cats emerged from the plants prehistoric plants, taking their place by their master’s side. Wuya, elegantly and effortlessly, crossed the distance to take her place in the group of minions, robots and cats, surrounding the monks. 

They all seemed to take one step, almost choreographed, towards the Xiaolin. The four monks exchanged glances.

“Hey...” Raimundo grinned, “remember that thing we practiced?”

Kimiko smirked. Clay tipped his hat. Omi gave a thumbs up.

Raimundo raised his hands. “Shoku Astro! Wind!”

All four monks shot up into the air, riding the wind until they hit the crest, where they leapt forward in different directions over the crowd. The minions also scattered in four different directions, separating the mob.

From there it descended into a malstrom. Fireballs flew through the air, shattering bots and burning fur. The water fountains started gushing water, transforming into daggers of ice and piercing anything that moved. The wind caught bones and sent them flying as projectiles.  
And the floor shook, sending skeletons and rocks toppling over, pinning them to the ground.

Chase Young intercepted Omi, while Wuya dogged Kimiko. Jack, for his part, flew straight up into the air to avoid the fighting entirely. The Fang seemed no closer to either side, Dojo having a not made a peep since he left.

A brontosaurus skeleton broke apart, crashing to the ground. The head smashed through a glass window, revealing a scientist’s workstation, and fell further inside to collide with a metal cabinet.

Out of that cabinet popped a gleaming white fang the size of a fist on a silver fastener, studded with polished obsidian and trailed by a silk cord of bright red that ended in a tassel.

Dojo crawled out of from between the vertebrae. “Yeah, I...thought that’s where it was! Hey guys!”

Clay was closest. He bolted across the tile, grabbing a lion and tossing it into a Jackbot on the way. The impact sent the bot wildly off course, and directly into Jack, who plummeted right onto the Fang as Clay’s hand closed around it. Clay growled.

“Jack, I challenge you to a-”

“-a Showdown Trio.”

Hannibal Bean emerged from his hiding place in the Fang’s blood-red tassel.


	5. Slandered and Suffocated

Now Clay had a problem. A corn-fed blue-ribbon prize winner of a problem.

If it were just Jack Spicer, this would be a cakewalk. A sick calf could beat Spicer with it’s hoof stuck in a prairie dog hole.

Hannibal Roy Bean, though? Well, first thing Clay realized was that the bean had been hiding in the tassle, in the cupboard, for who-knows-how long just waiting to challenge someone to a Showdown. He’d had the fang in his little plant tendrils and opted to risk losing it in order...well, Clay had no idea. It was bit too evil for his thinking. Maybe this is just gloating, or maybe he’s got another goal in mind.

And not knowing sure was working to put Clay off his game. Not helped by Jack’s ear-piercing scream right next to his ear.

“Well, now, ain’t this a disappointment. I was hopin’ to face down some of the big hitters, but don’t worry, I’ll letcha both get to first at least.”

Clay grit his teeth, but it wasn’t out of determination. Something in his chest lurched at the words, but he didn’t talk back. He didn’t know what kind of trap Hannibal was setting, but there  _ was _ a trap, plain as day.

Jack didn’t have the same foresight. “What?! I’m totally a big hitter!”

“Well,” Hannibal jabbed a vine at Clay, “got a better batting average than the monk, at least.” 

_ “Hannibal!” _ Chase fumed so hard Clay could have sworn he felt the heat from across the room, like a cat in a barn fire. “I demand you drop the Fang and leave at  _ once! _ ”

“And just how did you even know about the Fang? Or where to find it?” Wuya asked, smirking sightly.

“Well, I do have my little ways.” said Hannibal with a shrug and a wink, “and I’ll drop it if it I lose the Showdown. Though considering the competition, I wouldn’t be holding your breath."

“Don’t listen to him, Clay!” Raimundo called from the sidelines, “You got this!” 

Omi gave him a thumbs up. “We know you can do it!

“Bury ‘em, Clay!” Kimiko called.

" I got this too!” said Jack, nobody listening.

“Ain’t that cute?” said Hannibal with a chuckle, “Your little friends trying to make ya feel better about your abysmal track record. Just warms the heart, don’t it?”

“Yer gonna eat those words,” said Clay.

“No, he won’t!” said Jack, “because I’m gonna win this!”

Hannibal’s eyes were fixed far behind Clay or Jack. His gaze had locked with Raimundo, grinning smugly. Raimundo stepped forward on instinct, but whatever he was about to do was interrupted by Kimiko’s hand on his shoulder and Jack’s impatient bark:

“Call the showdown already, you dumb hick!”

Clay shook his head, and closed his eyes, taking a cleansing breath. In the nose, out the mouth. Whatever Hannibal had planned, because it was obvious there  _ was _ a plan, would be nipped in the bud if he got the Fang first. He couldn’t be rattled no matter how the bean tried get under his skin. “My Third-Arm Sash against your Moby Morpher and Jack’s Monkey Staff! Game is race to the top! First one to get the fang from the T-rex’s mouth wins!” 

The three competitors squared off for a final time before shouting in unison. 

_ “Let’s go! Xiaolin Showdown!” _

The bones of the fallen dinosaur skeletons swirled around the three combatants, reconstructing themselves into a massive dome tangled and tied with the fake plants of the exhibits. In the center, the skeleton of a ten-storey tyrannosaurus rex rose from the ground, shattering tile. Its head was locked in an open-mouthed roar showing off the Fang of Shìxuè gleaming among it’s ancient grey teeth.

Clay stepped to the the base of the T-rex’s foot, his Wudai armor forming around him. Jack jogged to the starting line. Hannibal stood on his two vines, sauntering to their side with an expression like the cat that ate the canary.

Tied to the bone cage were two observation decks, one for the three remaining monks and one for the Chase and Wuya. Chase’s cats clamored across the cage, growling and roaring. Chase aimed a glare directly at Jack, who responded with a shiver and a frightened whine. He didn't make a threat. Clay figured Chase didn't  _ need _ a threat.

“Clay!” shouted Dojo, “No pressure, but get that Fang or, uh, the you-know-what is gonna let us all have it!” 

_ “Gong Yi Tampai!” _

Suddenly, Clay felt something sucking at his feet, pulling him under with a startling speed. The only solid rock left were the platforms under the dinosaur’s skeletal feet. The rest of the arena had become a swirling pit of quicksand.

“Third-Arm Sash!” Showdown arenas were occasion tricky like this, but Clay’d been banking on having a moment to let Jack and Hannibal get in each other's way while he took the side they weren't on. Now he was first off the starting line and in the lead and coming up with a strategy on the fly would be harder from a defensive position.

The Sash latched around one of the dinosaur’s ribs and pulled him out of the quagmire. It was a minor miracle he hadn't lost a shoe. Calls of “Monkey Staff” and “Moby Morpher” told him that the fight was on. 

Clay had gotten an early lead, but he already knew he wouldn't have the speed to keep it. The difference between ribs and monkey bars weren't exactly appreciable in the thick of battle, and Hannibal had decided that the best way to tackle this was to grow three extra sets of arms and climb giant centipede-style. Clay swung his arm up to catch the next rib, the Sash letting go of the rib it was on to hook there as well. If he had an advantage now, it was that the third arm sash would act as a tether and had the strongest grip of-

“Clay!” Raimundo shouted, “Behind you!” 

Clay swung his arm back violently and caught something furry and sharp and screaming. Monkey-Jack’s tooth canine nicked his wrist, drawing of small trickle of blood. Jack went down squalling like a turkey jumping a fence, but his tail hooked the skeleton’s hip bone and he swung up to perch on it.

Hannibal took the moment, crawling under the bottom the ribs and closing the distance between them, bringing himself face to face with Clay.

“That’d be cheatin’-”

Jack was also closing the distance, bounding up the vertical rib-cage with ease. 

“-if you didn’t need the handicap.”

Clay saw Hannibal rear his expanded bulck, about to slam it forward. He could either go up the ribs or over to the vertebrae but was too slow in deciding and the impact of Hannibal's swing rattled him out of his handhold. He fell until it was broken by the Third-Arm Sash’s hold. That put him at about equal to the last rib.

“Ain't never been fishin’ for beans before. But I reckon it just takes the right hook!”

Clay focused his entire weight into a karate chop at the base of the rib. It broke off into his hands, raining bone fragments to the ground. It would have been impossibly heavy for a man who's physical strength wasn't augmented by the literal power of the Earth, but the rib was still unwieldy and awkward. With all his might, Clay swung it in an arc.

The tip of the bone caught in Hannibal's mouth. Clay ripped it downward. With a gargling roar, Hannibal’s grip broke and he went plummeting to the ground.

Jack was so focused on regaining his ground that he hadn't noticed that right then wasn't an opportune time to leap. The entirety of the giant bean slammed into Jack and sent them both to the quicksand below. Not even the angered roar of Chase's lizard form and all the cats calling in unison drowned out the joyful cheers of the monks.

“Most ingenious!”

“You smacked that bean  _ down _ , m’man!”

“Way to go, Clay!”

Clay tipped his hat before planting his feet on the rib above the one he’d broken, preparing to swing upwards on the Sash. He just had to grab-

_ “Moby Morpher!” _

Hannibal’s top half still stuck out of the quicksand as Jack’s screams, along with his head, vanished under the surface. Hannibal had retracted his extra sets of arms, but his original two stretched impossibly far and taut to loop around the rib, on either side of Clay. Below, Hannibal’s body was no longer sinking. It was being pulled out.

Clay raised his hand for another chop to the rib’s base, but it was too late. The quicksand gave way. Hannibal was flung like a slingshot. Clay kicked off his foothold, swinging from the upper rib to a lower one on the other side. The Sash retracted as Hannibal smashed through the place where Clay was a moment ago.

“Nice try, boy!” Hannibal caught himself on the T-rex’s tail. “Real clever. I suppose the team  _ simpleton _ must love fishing while the others take care of the hard thinkin’!”

Clay wasn’t going to let that rotten plant get under his skin. He knew better. He did. “Third-Arm Sash!” The sash shot upwards as far as it could, but it wasn’t enough to reach the skull. He’d have to hook it to the breast bone, but Hannibal was already launching himself again.

“Same story every time, ain't it Clay? Strong start but ya choke at the finish line.”

Hannibal was now giving chase, the two of them swinging around the skeleton. Clay could just about stay out of his way, but all the ground he didn’t lose meant ground he couldn’t gain, Hannibal constantly badgering him from above

“Say, you a bettin’ man? I’ll make you a little wager.”

Hannibal attacked, one arm still stretched and one curled into a fist. Clay swung out of his way.

“How’s your beloved leader gonna placate ya when you lose this one?”

A swing. A dodge.

“Does he change it depending on how you screw up? Or did Master Fung give him a nice list of platitudes to choose from? Bet you’ve heard ‘em all by now!”

Clay jabbed his fist out to slug him and missed.

“I expect you don’t even remember what not losin’ a fight feels like. Just all the empty reassurances after.”

The other three Xiaolin Warriors stood at the end of the platform. Clay got a glimpse as he made another effort to get some height. Kimiko’s hand on Omi’s shoulder. Raimundo visibly  _ seething.  _ Clay had to make his move or this would never end. Fish or cut bait. He was going to have to wait Hannibal out and go around him and to do that…

“What’s the plan here? You just gonna sit there and wait for me to clobber ya?” 

Clay braced himself against the dinosaur’s spine, limbs finding whatever holds they could, muscles tensed. 

“Well, if there’s one thing you’re good at, it’s waitin’ for someone else to do the hard work. Happy to oblige.”

Hannibal completed the arc of his final swing, as high as possible and then let go into an angled powerdriv.

_ “Third-Arm Sash!” _

The sash’s tasseled hand shot out to the side, looping around to grab the dinosaur’s thin but sturdy arm.

Hannibal slammed into the space where Clay was a moment ago. The impact formed a crack in the vertebrae, and the mighty skeleton’s top half fell forwards like a tree..

Clay didn’t have much time to adjust his trajectory, and not near enough to go wide around the toppling t-rex. His only hope was to go between the ribs, up and over the back of the spine.

“Told ya you’d eat those words, you sad excuse for a chuck-wagon’s main cours- OOF!”

He’d turned to say that and he’d missed the wide part between the ribs and hit the tapering space between them. Clay was  _ stuck _ , his arms pinned against his sides.

The bottom dropped out of his heart as his skeletal trap plummeted the rest of the way to the ground in a cloud of dust.

Hannibal, back in his tiny form, squirmed through the gaps in the bones and hopped across the shattered remains of the once-proud monster to lay his vines on the fang.

“Seems like only one of us has an eating problem here.”

The world warped itself back into reality as Hannibal’s laugh echoed across the arena. The trashed skeletons reassembled themselves, the building’s broken windows fused back together, even the tile replaced itself on the floor.

Except over a rapidly growing lump of earth. With a burp of air, the showdown gave back what it had taken, and Jack Spicer emerged on the surface, hacking up a lungful of air. He rolled from his side to his back, to see…

“You  _ idiot _ !”

Jack screeched in fear. Chase Young’s fangs snapped right in front of his eyes.

“I should have known better than to involve you! You had the might of my warriors behind you, and the advantage in the showdown and you still lost! Dogsbody? Ha! You can barely  _ fetch _ !” Chase looked to Wuya for back-up, but she had her eye trained on Hannibal, a thoughtful look on her face.  


While Jack was sputtering excuses, Clay felt like he might lie on the floor forever. Not just because he’d hit the floor hard and jarred his shoulder, either. He only stirred when he heard the sound of the other three monks running up to him.

“Clay!” Kimiko shouted, “Are you OK?”

He’d heal, but he still felt stupid all over. But he could stand. He said nothing, keeping his hat carefully pulled over his eyes as he got to his feet, and that, more than anything, spoke volumes to the other monks. They’d known him too long to be fooled into believing it was alright, anyhow.

“Sorry...I’m sorry, I-”

The Third-Arm Sash fluttered in front of his face.

_ “Fang of Shìxuè!” _

A blood-red beam hit Clay in the back, and he lurched forward as if he’d been struck by an axe. For just one second, his eyes went bright white. Clay fell forward to his knees with a scream. He barely heard the terrified shouts of the other monks. All he heard were the palpitations of his own seizing heart.

Then it stopped. The beam faded. Hannibal had let go of the Fang and let it drop, Ying-Ying gripping the cord by her claws and letting it dangle behind her.

Instead of the usual sickly yellow, his eyes had gone bright blue. 

“Hoo! That's potent stuff! I forgot what kind of evil that Dashi could unleash when he put his mind to it, like a wasp’s nest shook up in a mason jar.” He put a tentacle to his mouth. “Well, I’ll be...that came right to me! Rekkon the cowboy shoulda been a poet instead of a monk.”

Clay felt himself being pulled to his feet by Kimiko and Rai, and he gasped out. “It was like...my soul was being ripped from my body.”

“Nnnnot your best metaphor.” Raimundo’s attempt at humor was betrayed by the breathiness of his voice. On the other side, Kimiko sucked in air through her teeth.

“That’s ‘cause it wasn’t.”

Clay was getting sick of Hannibal’s laughter, and it turned out he wasn’t the only one.

“Mr. Bean!” Omi charged forward, tiny body full of fury. “I no longer care that you are the winner of the showdown! You will drop the Fang of Shìxuè at once! Shimo Staff!”” 

“Omi,  _ stop! _ ” Raimundo meant it as an order, but Omi was already in motion. The staff extended outward, catching on a tile, and Omi pole-vaulted towards, intent to thrash bird and bean written all over his face.

Hannibal locked eyes with Omi and hopped off Ying-Ying to meet him. Just as Omi was about to strike, the bean began to glow.

“Wudai Crater! Earth!”

A massive hand of dirt and stone shot out of the floor, grabbed Omi and threw him out the automatic doors, which did not open in time. Shards of glass rained down on the floor below. 

Hannibal blinked twice, and his eyes were back to normal.


	6. Alone or in Pairs

_The temple was an inferno._

_Lightning flashed outside, the sky threatening to open up. Clouds, black as pitch, swirled outside, vengeful and angry. Heavy drops stung Raimundo’s skin as he tore around the corner, losing his balance in the mud, pitching to the side and catching himself with his hand. But still running, even in the second spent_

_Too slow. No matter what, too slow. Fast as lightning and it won’t be enough._

_Through fire and fire and endless fire he ran, frightened of what was there and what was not there._

_Nobody made a sound._

_Thunder clapped, fire crackled, rain poured in slamming sheets and nobody made a sound._

_“Omi!” he called. Desperate, wavering, terrified. “Kimiko! Clay!” The temple stretched endlessly onward._

_Moving shadows, swinging gently from side to side. By the kitchen._

_He bolted._

_He tripped._

_On the ground, on her side, lay Kimiko, her eyes wide and unblinking. When he fell over her, her body rolled onto its back. Her head, however, remained just as it was: severed, disconnected,  and unconcerned now with her body’s manhandling and the blood soaking her hair._

_Raimundo scrambled backwards on all fours away from the body, swallowing rising the bile in his throat. Thoughts, emotions, theories, and blame all collided and tangled with each other. Calm could not take over from panic. He stopped only when his head bumped into a wind chime hanging from the awning._

_No. Not a wind chime._

_A cowboy boot._

_Clay dangled from a support beam, his own lasso cinched tightly around his neck and robe in shreds from whatever struggle he put up. His head lolled to the side, impossibly loose from his neck, a thin trickle of blood dripping from the corner of his mouth._

_Tears pricked Raimundo’s eyes as he scrambled backwards, useless babble falling from his lips. “Wha-? How-? No- No, I didn’t mean...I can’t-! This can’t-!”_

_He leapt to his feet._ “Omi!”

_Omi’s lifeless body flew through the doorway._

_As if on cue._

_He ran to the boy, but it was too late. Omi lay face down in a puddle, which was rapidly reddening from the gaping hole in his chest._

_Raimundo spun to see a shadow, bean-shaped, twisting it’s tendrils around his legs, laughing._

_Lunging._

And then Raimundo woke up.

Tangled in his blanket, half-way off his mat sideways, head rubbing up against the wall of his bedroom stall. It was just a dream.

Everything’s fine. There’s no fire. He could hear Kimiko shuffle beside him and Omi’s even, measured breathing filling the empty space. Even if there was a fire, Kim and Omi would have it taken care of before it burned a single lotus.

It was just a dream.

Raimundo had no idea how long he lay there, staring into space. His eyes stung, and he didn’t even need a mirror to know they were bright red. He wasn’t up for crying this time, not after the fifth time. He was too exhausted.

 _‘Please don’t be 2:30 in the morning’_ he thought, holding up his phone and poking at it. _‘Please don’t be 2:30 in the morning.’_

2:45 AM.

Rai let his arm drop across his eyes.

It wasn’t the _exact_ same nightmare every time. Sometimes he was lucky enough to _watch_ his team die horribly. The image of Kimiko being crushed by a falling pillar in particular seemed to show up in his head whenever he stopped focusing. Or it could just be his fault outright instead of his fault by way of being too late. The dream was one of the the first and therefore hazy in his memory, but he’s fairly sure he tried to carry Omi on a gust of wind and ended up breaking his neck .

All those nightmares ended the same way: Omi, Kimiko, and Clay, lying dead on the ground, Raimundo standing before his friends corpses, with nothing, absolutely nothing, he could do for them. All he could do was wait for whatever killed them to come for him, and sometimes it took longer than others, because...who knows? So who or whatever was doing this to him could get their sick little jollies, or whatever.

And to put it lightly, he was getting sick of it.

Untangling himself from his blanket was delicate work because he had no idea where- Wait, no, Ninja Fred was wadded in the center of the blanket knot. He replaced Fred in his trunk, pulled the blanket back over the mat, and grabbed his black robes off the hook on the wall.

Might as well get ready for the day.

His route out the door took him by each of the other monk’s stalls, and the remnants of the pit in his stomach wouldn’t let him leave until he'd checked on all of them. Omi and Kimiko slept peacefully, un-impaled and un-decapitated, but Clay was nowhere to be seen.

Raimundo glanced around Clay's room. His bed was made, his robes were off the hanger, and he’d taken his hat when he left. That last observation, more than anything else, was how he knew it was serious.

The night air chilled Raimundo’s face when he stepped outside. Autumn was threatening to roll in early this year, but the summer still had some storms to deliver.

_-Clay’s hanging body and Kimiko’s severed head outlined against a flash of lightning-_

Oooooor Raimundo could not think about storms for awhile and focus on finding where Clay went. That was a much better plan.

He was hoping to spot Clay by a lit door or a shadow cast against a wall, but he was out of luck. The whole temple was dark, even the places where lighting _wouldn't_ involve manually lighting torches with a punk stick. There were times when the Xiaolin Temple felt more like home than home did, but it had been dragged into modern life kicking and screaming. The pipes screamed when you ran hot water for longer than a minute, which you had to do before it stopped running brown, and only a fourth of the rooms had electricity.

Raimundo leaned against the doorframe. The first place he should check if you couldn’t find Clay was the kitchen. But the moment he came to that conclusion, a voice jumped unbidden to his mind:

_‘Seems like only one of us has an eating problem here.’_

And Raimundo felt like a kind of a jerk.

He’d felt that way the entire back-half of yesterday, starting with the mopey sullen ride homel. Clay sat way up at the front of Dojo, away from the rest of them. Nobody said a word.

Except when he heard Dojo mutter something that sounded like “Yeesh, that was a masterclass in poisoning the well.” Which Raimundo didn’t quite get until he realized that he had no idea what to say to Clay to take the sting out of the loss. None of them did. Everything they could say at that point would be filtered through the lens of conciliatory platitudes directed at the team loser.

That had been Hannibal’s plan all along. He’d put it in their heads that they couldn’t try to cheer Clay up without it coming across as hollow and meaningless. Taunting was one thing, taunts from evil villains were just par for the course, easily ignored because kicking their butts was more like exercise than a challenge.

Of course, Raimundo picked on Clay’s weight and folksy manner all the time. They all kind of did, even if Omi mostly did it on accident. That was all...camaraderie, just friends giving each other grief, and Clay gave back as good as he got. But mocking a showdown record?

Off-limits. It just was. Even Omi knew that. This was different from normal mockery. More insidious and worst of all, targeted.

A faint light glowed around the corner, and at first Rai thought it might be Clay eating his semi-nightly midnight snack, but the kitchen window was dark. The glow was instead coming from the explosion-carved sigil from that morning.

Dojo didn’t land them back at the temple until late in the evening, by which time Master Fung had almost finished sweeping all the golden dust on the tile into a heap. The luster had worn off by then, and what once gleamed in the light just looked like an ordinary pile of sand.

“Young Monks,” he’d said, “Follow me.” In the garden was the egg, wrapped in a silk blanket.

“Master,” Omi said, “We are keeping it out in the open? What if evil seeks to steal it?”

“This will be your new duty. Your most _important_ duty. Raising a dragon is no easy feat at the best of times, and Shòu is a very special dragon.” At Dojo’s puppy-dog eyes, he hastily added “...though all dragons are special in their own way.”

“So, what? We just give it lots of sun and water it twice a day?” said Raimundo.

“The Dragon of Life will dictate its needs. It will be your job to satisfy them until the egg hatches.”

Kimiko stepped forward. “I’m with Omi on this one. We can’t just leave it out here, look at it!” The egg gleamed so bright in the evening sun that the monks had to stand to the side of it to keep from being blinded. “It’s like a big neon sign that says ‘Evil-doers! Come and get it!’”

She approached the egg. “Hey Shòu? Why don’t you come inside with us? We’ll put you in a nice sunbeam where you can-”

She picked up the egg.

A moment later, Raimundo hoisted her back to her feet. She had an expression like her brain had nearly been rattled out of her skull.

“Right,” said Kimiko, “Sorry, bad idea. I get it. You...just stay there as long as you like.”

The monks came to agreement that Shòu could probably just let them know when he needed something and left it there for the rest of the evening. Master Fung did not say a word about the Fang, and the monks didn’t tell him, but he’d made them dinner that night. He’d even brought out the good beef, the really marbled cuts. And seasoned Omi’s cabbage just the way he liked it.

The sigil was easier to see at night, an intricate spiraling shape that looked like it might be a character from a language nobody could remember. Raimundo found it slightly hypnotising, though that could also be sleep deprivation.

When he looked up, he noticed tiny pricks of light scattered across the ground, not glowing but reflecting the moonlight. They were scarce and spread out, but once Raimundo spotted them they were easy enough to track, like following an ant across an empty field.

He was going to have to apologize to Master Fung for calling that the “dumbest training ever.”

There wasn’t much of a trail to follow, but it primed him to see where there was. Across the temple grounds, a clear line led from the garden to...the Shen Gong Wu vault.

The egg was gone.

Raimundo tore into the vault. It had been opened, the stairs leading down into the darkness. He couldn’t see the shining dust without the light of the moon, but running his finger across the top stair revealed a thick coating.

“Ai, who’s down there?!”

A southern drawl answered back.

“Jus’ me,” Clay poked his head out of the darkness, climbing up the steps, the dragon egg cradled in his arms. He was still in pajamas. Raimundo furrowed his brow.

“What’re you doin’ up so late? And why do you have the egg?”

Clay shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep a wink.”

“Is it about the showdown, dude? Because you know all that stuff Bean said was, you know... junk, right?”

Raimundo was not a natural at comforting people. He was the kind of guy to blow off steam with, not sit around and talk about feelings. His expertise were intense games of soccer, or spars that lasted for hours, or breaking into somewhere restricted until they were laughing too hard to remember whatever it was that bringing them down.

“If ya say so.” Clay hit the landing, and Raimundo could see that his bangs were plastered against the brim of his hat, as if he had a major static electricity problem.

“No, c’mon, don’t. Bean-dude would say anything to throw you off your rhythm.”

“Sure,” said Clay, averting his eyes where his bangs were failing him, “‘ceptin’ that everything he said was _true_ and I just can’t-Whoa nelly!”

The egg twitched and juttered violently in Clay’s arms, and he had to shift it in his hands to keep from dropping it. Raimundo’s alarm was cut with slight relief, because he was digging for an answer to Clay’s last sentence and coming up empty and having a few moments to think was going to do both of them a lot of good.

“What’s it doing?”

“Well, I came outside to clear my head when I saw that symbol outside glowin’ like a greenhouse full’a fireflies. When I went to check it out I saw somethin’ creepin’ around, headed towards the vault.”

“Spicer?”

“Nah, it’s...ya know what? Watch.”

Clay stepped to the entrance of the vault, and knelt to the ground. He placed the egg on the floor, balancing it perfect upright. He looked at Raimundo for a moment, make sure he was watching, and let go. The egg trembled and rocked, this way and that, until it teetered over to it’s side. Then, it began to roll across the room and to the very top of the stairs. Raimundo thought for a moment that it would fall and shatter, but Clay snagged his wrist before he could go catch it.

With an amount of control no egg should have, it pivoted it’s narrow side to the end of the stair and tipped over, catching itself on the next stair with a little _tik_ and balancing on that end, before slowly coming to rest on it’s side. Then it repeated the process for the next stair, and the next. Slowly but with purpose, the egg made its way down four steps before Raimundo turned his attention back to Clay. Clay stood, brushing the dust from his knees.

“We’re followin’?”

Raimundo nodded.

The egg made its way down the steps of the vault, one by one. For the boys, the going was stop and start, and since it seemed to want something at the bottom of the vault, it was taking forever.

“Look, you know Hannibal was just saying all that stuff to throw you off, right?”

“And it worked.”

“Dude, it’s _whatever._ It’s not the first time we’ve lost a dangerous Wu and got it back later. You know how this goes. Remember the Shadow of Fear?”

Clay smoothed his hair over his eyes, frowning. “Rekkon I do. Dunno if you remember it, partner, but that was one of the ones I _lost._ ”

Raimundo bit his lip. “Yeah, OK, bad example. But we got it back in the end, in a showdown you helped win, remember?”

There were times when Clay’s stoic disposition was maddening, but Raimundo could have sworn his friend was standing a little straighter. He’d take it as a good sign.

“So why’re _you_ up so late?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not. I’m up at three in the mornin’ ‘cause I was feelin’ lower than a prairie dog’s basement, but I also spent my life up at the crack of dawn to do chores on the ranch. When you’re up before 10 we gotta hold you up by your collar.”

That wasn’t _wrong,_ exactly, but Raimundo still bristled a little. “Hey, I can be up by 8! Most days. Anyway, I thought after the fang you’d be dead to the world.”

Clay shot him a look, and Raimundo reflected that he could have chosen the words a little better.

“Don’t even joke, Rai, that Fang felt like it took ten years off my life. And you still ain’t answered my question.”

Raimundo sucked in air through his teeth. “Unrelated, dude.  just feel lucky you weren’t chosen for leader. The hours are murder.”

Clay went silent, stepping down next few stairs. Raimundo puzzled on this for a moment before a memory washed over his brain: A farm, pigs shoving him down in the mud, and long nights patching over the old patches in a pair of ragged overalls, keeping watch for anything giant and scorpion-shaped.

 _Tik,_ went the egg. _Tik. Tik. Tik._

“...You’re seriously still feeling crummy about that?”

“Guess yer right. Not like it matters now.”

Raimundo shook his head. “Nah, I meant..It didn’t even _happen_ now! We kicked their butts and put everything right in the end. Just like always.”

“Yup,” said Clay, not looking at him, “Sure did. Thanks to you.”

“Thanks to _us._ ”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Clay said nothing more, and a heavy silence hung over the air. Raimundo knew he’d wiffed it at the last minute. Clay just wasn’t much of a talker. He’d probably been going for a walk, alone, to clear his head like he often does and Raimundo had probably just talked him back into feeling bad and had no idea how to bring him back.

And when he really thought about, it was as messed up that trying to comfort his team was now an officially sanctioned _leadership_ _duty_ as it was that he was _failing_ at it.

“Look, we’re both tired. It’s been a rough day. We’ll-” his voice hitched just for a moment “-just go back to sleep and work this out in the morn-”

He cut himself off. The egg had stopped in front of a drawer and stood upright. Clay and Rai exchanged a nervous, slightly weary glance.

The Chinese character carved into the stone drawer read “FANG.”

“Hey!” said Raimundo, clamping his hand on Clay’s shoulder and pulling him back up the stairs. “Master Fung said the egg will dictate it’s own needs, right? Well, I think our pal has finally found where he wants to be! So _let’s get out of here._ ”

The egg tipped forward, gently leaning against the wall. If Raimundo didn’t know better, he’d swear it was glaring at them.

“Look, pard’” said Clay, who’d also picked up on what was about to happen, but not quite that Raimundo was trying to buy time. “I’m powerful sorry about your Fang. You give us a little time and we’ll get it back, right as rain! We just gotta find the Bean and-”

The two monks went ramrod stiff. Raimundo could tell Clay was experiencing the electricity in the air as well. Not the sudden jolt of energy that knocked the monks to the ground in the garden, but a building, twisting feeling like a rolling thunderstorm. The two boys braced against the wall, knowing what was coming. The dragon egg begin to glow.

Raimundo thought the foundations were about to crumble. They could hear the chimes clanging as they shook violently. Every drawer in the vault rattled loose from it’s space, spilling Shen Gong Wu down the vault steps.

“The egg can make earthquakes now!?”

“Ain’t no earthquake!” said Clay. “It’s releasing energy right into the ground!”

Raimundo slapped at the wall, trying to get a better grip. “How can you tell?” Clay tapped the floor as he tried to get footing. Tiny roots cracked their way through the wall and floors, growing . A group of mushrooms popped up underneath Raimundo’s feet.

The dragon was going to bring the entire vault on their heads.

“Stop! Stop it, dragon dude!” Rai screamed, stumbling down the stairs and scooping the egg into the air. Severing the connection was enough to stop the earthquake, but Raimundo found his teeth chattering uncontrollably.

“W-well...Omi and K-Kim ought-ta be up-p by n-now!”

Clay watched Raimundo trying to lift his wobbling knees onto the next landing for a moment before scooping Raimundo into his arms to carry him carrying the egg. Clay’s hair sprung back up to the brim of his hat as the leftover energy coursed through him.

“T-thanks, man.”

“No problem, pard. Wonder if Dojo ever had a security fang...”


	7. Extra Virgin

“You seem like- oof- like a real nice kitty! If you put me down right now, I'll do something really special for you!”

Jack Spicer had been dragged down enough hallways by enough large cats to know physically fighting would only ruin his nice trench coat. This time, however, he had an ace in the hole.

“OK! You should know that I’m writing a book about my life and it’s gonna- ow- be a best-seller! Let go of me, and I’ll put you in as a special thanks!” 

Chase Young’s lair, halfway between fortress and palace and becoming tantalizingly familiar to Jack, snaked and wound in front of his eyes as the tiger hauled him in clinched jaws like a sack of potatoes. They passed the foyer, the dining room, and the kitchen, and Jack could almost convince himself he was being given the grand tour if he wasn’t seeing it sideways and his hip wasn’t hitting every bump where the tiles met.

“How’s that sound? ‘Special thanks to mom, Mrs. Cornhaven, and Jungle Cat Number 131!’”

The cat snarled. Jack crossed his arms and huffed.

“That’s a “no” huh? Fine, but you’ll regret that when I’m...watch the corner!...when I’m famous!”

Jack settled in for the ride, endless rooms that meant nothing to him passed without note, aside from one tiny sideroom, barely bigger than a closet, from which he could hear Wuya’s muffled voice, talking to someone he couldn’t.

“...I’d forget it for now...No, no, I can’t know about that yet, remember? If I hear-”

And then he was out of earshot. The cat was making great time, but the lair was long enough that Jack had time to think. He was going to face a good yelling-at for losing the Fang of Shìxuè, though, really, Chase could have jumped in at any point if it was that important to him. Chase would likely have very little respect for the crimp this put in Jack’s plans, which were to invent something to store the energy of the Fang and use it to drain everyone’s power and become ruler of the world, so, Jack reasoned with no small amount of spite, Chase was just going to have to be mad.

Maybe he’d work that out through whatever he was talking about with Wuya. But not likely.

“Hey, hey, where are we? Put me down before we hit the- Ow! Ow! Ow!” The tiger began to drag him down a narrow flight of stone steps Jack had never seen before. They were polished and clean, but the darkness of the stairwell and the cheap stone still gave the room the vibes of a horror movie, possibly called “The Stalker of the Skinny Stairs.” He half expected a pair of white eyes to start glowing and hissing a nursery rhyme.

Down they went, Jack’s body banging on every last step. His skin came over with goosebumps as the temperature dropped and he wondered, vaguely, what the purpose of a completely dark stairwell was. Cats could see in the dark, though Jack had no idea if that meant total dark or just really, really dark. The tiger carrying him didn’t seem to have any trouble on that front, even though Jack only knew how many stairs they’d gone down by the bruises on his legs.

Chase being a lizard? Jack had no idea how good his night-vision was and an unbidden thought jumped into his head: Did Chase ever risk falling down the stairs?

Suddenly, Jack was laughing. He heard the tiger’s warning growl, but he couldn’t stop himself. The image of Chase tumbling down the stairs like a ragdoll was just too silly.

“I’m glad you find your failure so amusing, Spicer.”

The tiger let Jack go, the impact of his body flopping to the floor knocking him out of his giggle-fit. He pulled himself up to his feet, feeling around in the dark. Suddenly, torches flared on either side of him. Chase Young stood with his back to the single entrance. The room wasn’t wide enough to accommodate much more furniture than it did: a white and gold altar in the shape of a bowl, a small shelf of jars with various tinctures, labels inked in a sharp and evil-looking language Jack couldn’t even guess at the origin of, and on the far wall, the one Chase was looking at, a massive carving.

The relief’s writing resembled ancient Chinese as written by a snow monkey on amphetamines, and Jack couldn’t make heads or tails of it. What he could understand was the dragon in the middle, larger than life.

“Why’s it wearing a dress?” said Jack, letting his eyes trace the frilled body that snaked down to the bottom, coming to a rest above some text in the same language covering the jars.

Chase ignored Jack’s question. 

“I believe I asked Wuya to brief you on the Fang of Shìxuè. Either she failed to follow my instructions, or you failed to retain it. Which is it, Spicer?”

“I got it!” said Jack with an indignant shrug, “you point it and it eats your soul!”

“‘Point it and it eats your soul.’ Excellent. I suppose I’ll have that to comfort me when the Heylin’s might is reduced to nothing but stories in crumbling scrolls. 

Chase turned to face Jack, who flashed his winningest smile. “Listen, Chase, I get that you’re sore. I really do. I feel that way whenever I lose a Wu.”

Behind him, Jack heard footsteps. Wuya came lightly down the stairs. “It’s true,” she said, “you could set your watch by it.”

Chase turned away again and swept a hand across the carving on the wall. Jack recognized this as the rehearsed moves of a masterful evil actor, a theatrical gesture meant to grab the attention of his attendant audience. It was impressive, Jack had to admit.

“You think I’m simply sore...Tell me, Jack, just what do you think I want with the Fang?”

“To...destroy the monks?”

“Yes. Eventually. And how do you envision I do that?”

“The whole...soul-eating...thing?”

Wuya sat, crossing her legs on the stairwell, head tilted, face kept carefully impassive. 

Chase reached a hand out and touched the dragon’s tail.

“It is true that the Fang is powerful, but to use it to its fullest potential the holder must be equally as powerful, able to absorb another’s life energy without his physical body being overwhelmed by it. There are only three in the known universe who can do this. The first is the dragon himself.”

He ran his fingers down, past the illegible chinese, and to the sharp writing below.

“The second,” he said, face twinging with revulsion, “is Hannibal Bean.”

“Oh, really? Wow, probably not great for you that he’s got it, huh?”

Chase whipped around, reeling on Jack in full lizard form. Jack shrieked at the top of his lungs.

“I didn’t mean to lose the Fang! I didn’t mean to lose the Fang so much!?” Another shriek cut off his babbling and mingled with Chase’s roar. “Don’t hurt me, I’ll get it back! I’ll get it back!”

Chase withdrew, but he didn’t turn back into a human. “You will try and you will fail, I can promise you that. Hannibal will do everything in his power to keep his disgusting hands on it.”

“His...hands?”

“Keep up, Jack,” said Wuya, “Hannibal's plans likely extend far beyond what we can see right now. Believe me, this isn't a simple power play.”

“Yes,” said Chase folding his hands in front of him, “I know the two of you have been very chummy in the past.”

“And you, Chase,” Wuya said, ignoring his venom “should know that if Hannibal hasn't struck by now then he has something else in mind than mere power. Otherwise we’d have heard the headlines about four monk skeletons in the Xiaolin temple!”

Chase growled, but the venom in it was subdued enough that Jack guessed she was right. An uncomfortable silence settled over the...Jack guessed this was a shrine.

“So...who’s the third?”

Chase smirked. So did Wuya.

“Me,” said Chase, “Once I consume the Dragon of Life I will have all of it’s powers at my command! I will rule the world with an iron fist! Or should I say...a golden one.”

Jack didn’t get the joke, but he joined in the evil laughter for his own reasons.

“You’re gonna make soup out of the super-dragon? That is so cruel! I love it!” Behind him, Wuya got to her feet and set her hand on Jack’s shoulder.

“Once Chase consumes the dragon, he will no longer need his Lao Mang Lone soup to maintain his human form or his youth.”

“Really? He has that stuff prepared?”

“That’s right, Jack. Why, he might as well chuck the entire cupboard full!”

Chase snarled, loud and pointed directly at Wuya. “In any case, make no attempt to get the Fang. It can not possibly go well for you. The most I want you and the maid to do is watch for Hannibal’s next move and inform me.”

Jack considered this. Of course he had to make a try for the Fang, that was certain. What he wasn’t so certain of what he was going to with it when he got it. He could wait until Chase had achieved his Super Mega Ultimate Form, whatever it was, and take his power. Or he could simply make and drink the soup himself. Jack studied the recipe on the wall that he didn’t know how to read, staring at the ingredients that he didn’t know what they were, listed in amounts that he couldn’t understand. 

Alright. Let Chase make the soup himself. Problem solved.

“There’s something I still don’t get,” Jack said, “if you’re just gonna cook up the dragon, why can’t you just do that and take the Fang yourself?”

Chase sighed with the familiar exasperation of his first grade teacher when he asked when lunchtime would be as she was trying to teach him multiplication. “Ordinarily when a dragon loses a tooth, it grows back. The Dragon of Life, however, is different. If the Fang is not reunited with the dragon, it will never reach full power and the soup made from it will merely be Lao Mang Lone soup.”

Jack nodded in understanding. Mystical stuff always had catches like that. He turned to the stairs, taking two at a time. Chase wasn’t looking at him.

“Great! I’ll make a tracker, I’ll call you when I get i- have news! I’ll call you when I have news! About the Fang! See ya, C.Y! Witchy Woman! I’ll catch you on the- Ahhhhh! Getoffgetoffgetoff!” The tiger that had dragged him to the shrine was ready and waiting to escort him out the way he came in.

Wuya watched him go with a little crunching wave, then turned to Chase.

“OK, Chase. Explain yourself.”

Chase turned to her, now back in human form. “Simple. I need that Fang.”

“So you get Spicer to do your dirty work?”

“In a way.”

“Spicer will never survive an encounter with Hannibal, you know that.”

“I do. And I also know that Hannibal is itching to try out his new toy. Spicer is resourceful enough to find the bean, but when he does, Hannibal will drain him dry.”

“And?”

“And take his chi.”

“So what, Hannibal gets Jack’s robots and his fool-hardy tenacity and his terrible luck and his clumsiness and...and his upper body strength...Oh! I see!” Wuya laughed gleefully, a full body lightness traveling from her head to the tips of her toes. She cleared the room in two long strides, barely touching the ground. Chase did not react to her feather-light touch to his arm, or the way her breath tickled his hair. “Very clever, Chase. I suppose that’s why you are the most evil creature to blight this pitiful earth.”

“No one will stop me,” Chase purred, “Not even Omi.”

“And where do I fit in your plan, hmm?” Wuya’s voice was more playful than suspicious. “At the bottom of your stomach, perhaps?”

“Wuya. You know me better than that.”

“Perhaps. But I don’t know the you that will emerge from the Dragon of Life.”

“Hmmm,” Chase closed his eyes. “Don’t divulge any more sensitive information to a worm like Spicer, and he’ll be charitable. For your information, I plan to destroy those cans when they are no longer needed. Now leave me. I must prepare myself to receive the Dragon’s power.”

Wuya did, withdrawing her hands, slinking up the stairs and out the door. She returned to her place, reclining at lip of the fountain, a small bushel of fresh olives sat where she’d left them. She took a fat one, popped it into her mouth, and searched the room as she delicately chewed.

No Jack, no cats, no crows. She sat up and balanced an olive on her shoulder. 

Something begin to crawl through her hair but she made no move to dislodge it. The hitchhiker moved with purpose, down her scalp and to the back of her neck before dropping onto her shoulder. Hannibal Bean picked up the olive, which was as big as he was, and took a sizeable bite, juice dribbling down his chin.

“Cannibal.”

He grinned. “Good work back there, darlin’. You coulda killed on broadway with that kind of acting.”

“You flatter me. Is that it then?”

“Got all the pieces in place,” Hannibal said with a shrug, “All we gotta do now is make the moves when the time’s right.” 

“Our moves to get Jack Spicer to drink Lao Mang Lone soup.”

“Among other things.”

“Oh! Let me guess: you have a plan you aren’t telling me.”

Hannibal shrugged and swallowed the mouthful he’d been talking around. “I’m tellin’ you the plan, just not the outcome.”

Wuya put another olive in her mouth. “I don’t even get a hint?”

“Well now, I’d just be spoilin’ the surprise!” He took another bite, pulling out the pit with his tendril and letting it drop into the water.

“Chase hates that.” said Wuya “It kills the koi when they eat it.” She paused her chewing and worked the pit in her own olive around to her front teeth. She then spat it into the pond with the force of a bullet, barely missing a giant golden fish. “I, for one, prefer the direct approach.”

Hannibal chuckled, turning himself around to look at her. “I s’pose there’s no harm in giving you a little hint. My plan has to do with a mutual friend of ours. One with whom we’ve had some...ideological disagreements in the past. Disagreements that left you and I with quite the setbacks, wouldn’t ya say?”

Wuya considered this for only a moment before she turned her head in puzzlement. “You want Jack Spicer to drink Lao Mang Lone soup so he can kill Raimundo?”

Hannibal sighed. “Now that’s just thinkin’ small. Frankly, I’m disappointed.“

“Well then, I’m sure I have no idea. If Jack Spicer drinks the soup, the first thing he’ll do is try to eliminate us.”

“Wuya, yer evil as the day is long but you still don’t get how mortals work.”

“You realize how easily that can apply to you-”

“The point I’m trying to make,” said Hannibal, frowning severely, “is that you’re writing a commercial jingle while I’m composin’ a symphony. One note at a time.”

“Hmmm. Well, don’t expect me to sit in on triangle. I think you’ll find my patience is limited.”

“Well, that’s the wonderful thing about mortals, ain’t it? They don’t have the kind of time gifted to creatures like us. Speakin’ of, how’s our little boy Shòu doin’ at daycare?”

Wuya scowled at the change of subject. “It’s only been a day-”

The water in the pond began to roil and churn, throwing frightened koi around in the current. The olive pits they spit in the water glowed golden for only a moment before exploding out of the water as two fully formed fruit-bearing olive trees, their roots digging so deep it pushed the earth up from between the floor tiles.

Wuya regarded the trees with only mild concern, as Hannibal clambered back into her hair. Chase’s security detail would arrive soon.

“But I suppose if I had to guess,” said Wuya, wringing water out of her dress, “I’d say he’s hit his colicky phase.”


	8. The King Who Isn't

Kimiko was first roused from her sleep when she felt Omi’s hands shaking her shoulders, came into consciousness when she realized an earthquake was shaking the rest of her, and the sound of a perfume bottle falling off her shelf and shattering startled her across the finish line to full alertness. The entire temple seemed about to rattle its way off the foundation. 

“Kimiko! Brighten your eyes and bush up your tail!” The panic in Omi’s voice had her kicking off her blanket. Once Kimiko was awake to his satisfaction, he leapt up from where he knelt and struck a battle pose that was only slightly undercut by his cloud-print onesie.

She suddenly felt something hard and sharp jab her through her mat between her shoulder blades which brought her the rest of the way to her feet. But just as she readied herself for the fight, it all stopped. The earth stilled with one last lurching jolt that jarred Omi off his balance, though he made a valiant effort to pretend he was simply about to perform a combat roll and changed his mind.

Kimiko rolled her eyes but when her gaze landed on the floor of her bedroom stall, her blood turned to ice. Prodding up through the floorboards and tearing through the outer covering of the matt was the business end of a bamboo sprout, woven filling spilling out on either side. The sprout had reached a little under a foot in the time between when she felt the initial poke and when it stopped growing.

Omi stared at it, eyes wide. “Oh...most fortunate that you are not a heavier sleeper, Kimiko.”

“OK,” she shook her head, “you know what? Not gonna even think about that.”

The two of them surveyed the room. Only about three bamboo shoots made it through the floor, but the evidence of the forest’s attempts to grow had left small hills across their four bedrooms, at least where the wood hadn’t cracked entirely. Kimiko clambored across the uneven terrain to fetch her desktop computer to a place on the floor where it would be less likely to fall and break.

“Most troubling,” said Omi, with the concerned but measured tone of someone who had an infuriating lack of material possessions to lose. “Who could be responsible for this strange new garden attack?”

“And where are Clay and Rai?” said Kimiko, making sure everything in her room was accounted for and unlikely to break if the shaking started again. She dug around her now slanted desk for her phone, slipping it in the pocket that lined her pajamas. “If they saw something they should have woken-”

_ Gunfire.  _

The rapid pops echoed through their shared bedroom, ripping their attention to the garden. Both monks, as if suddenly possessing one mind, bolted out of the room and down the hall, side by side. Kimiko on the left and Omi on the right, prepared for anything.

...Anything, that is, except what was actually happening. Instead of the expected Jackbot raid on the temple, the popping was, in reality, the sound of blooming flowers. Lotus blossoms, petals long gone in their late summer lifespan, twisted and shuttered until they reformed themselves once more into full blooms with speed and force enough to be heard across the grounds. They came back to life in a wreath of color, at the center of which were Raimundo and Clay, Raimundo dressed, Clay not, but both in equal states of dishevelment and both covered head to toe in golden dust. Raimundo was setting the Dragon of Life egg back in it’s nest while Clay wrapped the blanket back around it.

Raimundo jabbed his finger at the egg.  _ “ _ And this time? Sit and  _ stay.” _

Kimiko watched this for a moment, before she heard a small but determined intake of breath beside her, and when she glanced down she saw Omi puffing out his chest in determination, as if he were steeling himself to do something that would take a large amount of focused effort. Then he marched forward a few steps and then dropped to the ground in front of Raimundo in a deep bow.

“Rai, watch-“

But Kimiko’s warning came too late. Raimundo turned on his heel, caught his toe on Omi’s head, and crashed to the ground. The fall would have been comical, all flailing limbs and a billowing cloud of glitter on the impact, but Omi did not move from his position until Rai’s knee drove into the small of his back. This caused Omi to flop forward like a dead fish, limbs splayed in every direction. Raimundo only managed to get control over himself in time to avoid completely crushing Omi, catching himself with his hands and rolling over onto his back, though all three monks knew that Omi was sturdier than most bodybuilders and a clumsy fall would hardly be the thing to take him out.

Kimiko glanced up at Clay, who met her eyes and shrugged to indicate he didn’t know what Omi was doing either.

The answer came immediately, when Omi regained his breath and Raimundo had hopped back up to his feet. 

“I wish to humbly apologize, Raimundo! I am most ashamed of my actions!”

Raimundo’s stare fixed on Omi’s head, as he had pulled himself back to his knees, nose in the dirt.

“Uh...you wanna unpack that for me, Omi?”

“During our last battle, you ordered me to not attack Hannibal Roy Bean. I disregarded this. You are our leader, and I must respect and obey your orders, no matter how spar-of-the-minute they may be.”

“Spur of the moment, Omi. And it’s not that big of a deal. It wasn’t even that much of a-”

“Regardless, I will strive to do better in the future. I will never ignore-”

“OK! Here’s an order for you:  _ Cut the kowtowing!” _

Omi did, raising himself to his hands so that he could into Raimundo’s eyes. “I simply-”

“Look, don’t worry about it, OK? I don’t need this little floor show every time you feel bad you weren’t-” Raimundo stopped himself. “Every time. It’s freakin’ creepy.”

“But-”

“Gonna go make breakfast, I guess. Pancakes sound good to everyone? Me, I’m jonesing  _ pancakes. _ ”   


The three monks watched him storm off, every step shaking a shower of sparkles to the ground.

“Nice, Omi,” said Kimiko, shooting him a scowl. “Next time you want to make fun of him, wait until we catch him naming his muscles again.”

“I was not making fun of him! I simply do not understand! Is it so wrong that I would support him!?” Omi shouted, coming over with a foreign bitterness. “I simply wished to demonstrate the depth of my sincerity, but if he thinks I am simply jealous that-”

“Alright, alright, everyone outta the pool for a minute,” said Clay, palms up in a conciliatory gesture, “He probably ain’t thinking straight, that’s all. We’re  _ all _ up before the roosters here. He’ll cool off when he comes down from dealin’ with our guest.” He jabbed his thumb at the egg, talking mainly to Omi, but looking up at Kimiko with concern in his eyes, which told her they were thinking the same thing. 

“Yeah, Omi, Rai’s just used to you being, uh, leader. He’s adjusting!”

If he was adjusting, so was Omi, she reasoned. Omi’s jealousy tended to come out openly and fiercely, hidden with no more care than Dojo ever took in concealing stolen cookies. This new expression of envy was uncharted territory for all of them, but then, so was Raimundo’s leadership.

“We all know he ain’t been sleepin’ well, besides. You know what our partner’s like when he’s tired.”

Omi bowed his head. Kimiko took this to mean he was ashamed of his outburst, which was a good sign they could move on to the next crisis. “Did you get anything out of him? About the nightmares?”

“Dodged the question like a rattler through a field of goatheads.” Clay blew his hair out of his face. Kimiko felt herself deflate.

“Figures.” Raimundo’s nightmares hadn’t been a secret to them since the second night they happened, but the third night that had Raimundo up and awake at 2:30 in the morning also clued the team in that he had no plans to talk about them. Maybe he thought that because he never screamed himself awake they were still clueless. However, they were rapidly becoming kick-the-walls awake or toss-and-turn awake or talk-in-your-sleep awake nightmares, and equally as rapidly, it was becoming clear that he had no plans to talk about them to anyone.

“This is troubling,” said Omi, “Raimundo’s lack of sleep is becoming disruptive to our team harmony. Perhaps I should-”

“I think we oughta leave Rai alone for a bit. You up for a run, little partner?” Omi and Clay were the two early risers on the team, and often took morning jogs while they waited for the others to wake up.

“Yes, I think that would be best. Kimiko, would you care to join us?” Kimiko shook her head.

“Thanks, but I’m gonna go talk to Rai for a bit.”

“Very well,” said Omi, turning to Clay, “we will meet here when we are dressed.”

Clay nodded, and as Omi marched to their bedroom, Clay turned to Kimiko and mouthed the word  _ ‘denial.’  _ Kimiko nodded. 

Raimundo was just as he said: in the kitchen, making pancakes. And orange juice, and bacon, and when she glanced at the pile of flapjacks, she was surprised to see at least four varieties: Blueberry, banana, cinnamon, and apple, stacked high in the center of the table. He flitted from station to station, like a dragonfly on lily pads.

Kimiko stared at the spread, flabbergasted. “...It hasn’t been  _ five minutes _ .”

“Dojo lit the stove,” said Raimundo, answering about half of her questions.

“I can get a hot fire going when I want to!” Dojo had been hidden behind the blueberry pancakes, but now he poked his head around to wave at her from his seat at the kitchen table. It was only a miracle she’d timed the conversation between his bites of breakfast and she hadn’t had to see a mouthful of chewed pork.

“OK, that’s the how. Let’s move on to  _ why. _ ” Kimiko watched him go.

“Pretty sure I got a contact high off that dragon egg,” Raimundo said, putting another pile of bacon on the plate, “That thing is pure energy, yo! You saw we got a flower garden again, right?”

“And a bamboo garden in our bedroom,” said Kimiko. With a shrug, she set to fixing herself a plate of cinnamon pancakes, forgoing butter as it was situated near Dojo and reaching for it as he wolfed his food would involve a non-zero chance of pulling back with fewer fingers than she started with, but slathering them with syrup. “I nearly got skewered.”

Both of her friends stopped in dead mid-motion. Dojo swallowed hard. Raimundo waved his hand, a sudden gust of wind putting out the fire on the burner. He seemed far away for a moment, before snapping back to attention. “Like...through your neck?”

“Ooooookay. Morbid. Through my chest.”

“Oh, and that’s  _ less _ morbid?”

“Ahhh,” said Dojo, coming over all wistful. “The ol’ bamboo-growing-through-the-chest routine. That takes me back-” He noticed both monks staring at him. “-to stories you kids are  _ way _ too young to hear, so  _ forget it _ .”

Raimundo took a seat across from Kim, spearing a pancake with his fork. It was as if suddenly he’d remembered that he was supposed to be tired, all the manic energy of a moment before seemed to drain from him as if he’d been punctured.

“What’s the damage?”

Kim cut another bite. “We’ll probably have to replace the entire floor, and I lost a perfectly good bottle of perfume.”

“How will you ever recover from the trauma of your tragic-  _ don’t hit, I’ve got hot pancakes!” _

He was smiling, and so was she, and Kimiko let herself think that this morning’s unpleasantness was a fluke. He’d eat, get a nap, talk to Omi and they all breathe a sigh of relief before moving on to whatever new challenge the day would-

Her phone was ringing in the pocket of her nightgown.

“Girl, if I find out you sleep with that,” said Raimundo, through a mouthful of food crammed into his cheek, “you don’t get to say another word about Ninja Fred ever again.”

She rolled her eyes. “If this is that griefer from Goo Zombies Online sending me fake log-in links again, I swear…” When she fished it out, her demeanor changed completely, and she answered on the third ring. “Chucky Choo? I don’t have enough minutes to Facetime so-”

The yellow dragon’s face filled the screen. He looked anxious, bordering on panic. “Well? Is he hatched yet? Can I see him? Does he remember me?”

Raimundo leaned behind Kimiko. “Who, Shòu? Nah, Sparkles is still getting egg-sat in the garden. How’d you know anyway?”

Dojo let his fork drop to the plate with a loud  _ clink _ , slithering across the table. “Hey.”

Chucky smoothed his toupee back. “Guan guessed when our training grounds turned into a mangrove forest this morning. Ever hear a tree explode? Scared the scales off me!”

Dojo wrapped himself around Rai’s arm, maneuvering upwards around the folds in his sleeve. “Hey!”

“Wait, you’ve met the Dragon of Life?” Kimiko was slightly more skeptical than she had been for Chucky’s last few stories about sitting a young upstart sailed named Christopher in front of the Queen of Spain and smooth talking her into giving him a chance to find India by boat, but only if she could get a particularly courtly kiss from the adorable dragon he brought with him.

_ “Hey!”  _ said Dojo, hanging off Raimundo’s neck to look into the phone better. “You wanna talk _ yoyos _ , buddy boy?  _ Hmm? _ ”

Chucky considered this for a moment. “Nope, not especially.”

Dojo crossed his arms. “You’ve never met Shòu in your life, you liar.”

“Dojo, that cuts me deeper than any name I’ve ever been called, and my memory goes back as far as the Zhou dynasty. I really do know the Dragon of Life! We go way back!”

“Sorry, dragon dude,” said Rai, “I’m with Dojo on this one. You got any proof?”

“What?” said Chucky, huffing, “you think I could take selfies with him in 500 BC or somethin’?” Sensing that this was not winning over his crowd, he let his shoulders droop. He reached behind himself, pulling his tail in view of the camera and pointing to the snapped off spine, the point held on only with a single piece of scabbed up skin. “See that? Shou did that. Legends say that the hair on his tail is made of pure-”

“Gold?” Raimundo grinned in a way that said he felt he had no choice but to be a smart aleck. He turned the cuff of his sleeve inside out, letting a trail of gold dust sprinkle to the floor. “It’s gold, right? You were gonna say gold.”

Chucky laughed. “Well, I see the grand Xiaolin tradition of wiseacre leaders is still the same after 1500 years! Yeah, gold, as soft and. When I climbed up his mountain and asked for a strand he, uh, called me a disgrace to dragonkind and used his tail to sweep me off the edge of the cliff. I didn’t even get to pull one out on the way down.”

“OK,” said Dojo, “I believe that one.”

“So what you’re saying is, he’s always like this.” Raimundo shoved another bite of pancake into his mouth.

“Hey, that’s what you get when you’re dragon royalty,” Chucky shrugged.

“Shòu is  _ not _ royalty!” said Dojo. “Just because he’s golden doesn’t make him a big deal.”

“True. It’s his immortality and his demi-god powers that do that.”

Kimiko was startled. “You aren’t immortal, Dojo?”

“Well, ah, no. At least not in the sense that I can just choose to be reborn like our pal in the garden. Trust me, if just any dragon could do that, there’d be a lot more of us.”

“Nobody knows how long a dragon actually lives, kids,” said Chucky. “Since Chase Young developed a taste for scales...not a lot of us are going to live to retirement age, if you catch my meaning.” The silence that settled over the room was thicker than the stack of flapjacks in front of them.

“Hey,” said Clay as he and Omi came through the door, “nice spread!”

“Look kids,” said Chucky, “I gotta get going, but Guan told  _ me _ to tell  _ you _ that if you’re having trouble with sudden plant growth, it’s because the Dragon of Life’s energy isn’t stable yet. He’s probably sending out magic charges that are just traveling through the ground until they hit something conductive, like a seed.”

“Just seeds?” asked Raimundo.

“Well, and insect eggs. If that magic can’t find plants, that’s the next best thing. Don’t ask me why. I’m trying to talk Guan into coming over to give you a hand, but he thinks it’s a bad idea with all the bad blood between him and the Xiaolin order. Plus, the mangroves. You gotta check magic mangroves for  _ teeth _ , it’s a whole  _ thing. _ ”

Dojo’s eyes narrowed. “You just want to have another shot at getting one of his tail hairs.”

“Hey, can you blame me? Gold silk! That stuff practically sells itself! I’d be set for the next 1500 years on one strand!” He reached a claw out to the camera to shut it off. “I’ll see you kids later!”

“We’re not done with the yoyo!” said Dojo, but the phone was already off.

The rest of breakfast was split between eating, filling Omi and Clay in on what Chucky had told them, and Kimiko’s phone buzzing, most of which were GZO notifs. Kimiko kept an eye on Omi, half-expecting another stumbled apology to Raimundo, but he kept his eye on his plate, listening intently to Kimiko tell them what they’d learned.

In-between one of Dojo’s grousings about Chucky, she tapped Clay on the arm and leaned in to whisper  _ “what did you say to him?” _

Clay whispered back  _ “wait ‘til Rai’s had a nap.” _

_ Practical _ , she thought. Her phone rang again.

“I think this one’s for you, Clay.” He took it from her hand.

“Now how in tarnation did my sister get your number?”

“We talk sometimes.” The night after that fateful trip to Texas, Kimiko had found a small note in the pocket of her jeans, with Jesse’s number scribbled on it and an expression of sympathy for Kim being  _ ‘cooped up with my wet blanket brother and two other boys.’  _ Clay’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, but he answered anyway.

Kimiko had left the speakerphone on, which was good, because the conversation was mostly one-sided yelling on Jesse’s part, and the few sentences Clay could get out wouldn’t have told her much on their own.

“Jesse, I know ya’ll don’t need my help to get an exterminator.”

“This was a  _ legitimate _ job, Clay,” Jesse said, pronouncing the word with emphasis on every syllable. “Black Vipers gotta patrol our territory but the big scores don’t come so often in the desert prairie so we take work when it gets dangled in front of our faces. So we come across this guy offerin’ a reward for stompin’ some antlions and, yeah, it sounds loco, but the amount of money was hittin’  _ sacreligious  _ levels, so we can’t turn it down. We get there, it turns out these ain’t just any ol’ antlions, but  _ monster  _ antlions, bigger and meaner than a bull with barbed wire caught between its legs! And for every one we squash, two more come back for the vengeance and I start figgerin’ that if anyone’s gonna know the lowdown, it’s hero boy with his magic posse!”

“Jesse, calm down! We got this handled, I promise, but we gotta- Hang on, gettin’ another call.” Clay took a deep breath, relief evident on his face. Taking advantage of the moment of peace to clear his mind, he tossed the phone to Omi who caught it with confusion that gave way to excitement.

“Jermaine?”

“Omi dawg? You wanna tell me why there’s a rosebush comin’ up out of my toilet?”

There were no more calls after Jermaine’s, but the news alerts flew to Kimiko’s phone non-stop. Rainforests devouring farmland, forests that seemed to be creeping up on the cities they bordered, golf courses turning to swamps halfway through the backswing. Master Fung came up with the simple solution of picking the egg up off the ground, and Omi with the slightly more complicated solution of sealing it in the Sphere of Yun. That contained the energy pulses well enough, but had left the monks with different concerns.

“I fear,” Master Fung had said, as they gathered around the garden, “that in containing the dragon’s magic, we will have also stopped it’s natural defenses. We have many enemies who would stop at nothing to take the dragon. Therefore, you will each take turns guarding the egg.”

“I’ll take first watch!” said Raimundo, but instead of nods from his friends, he saw grimaces.

“You sure?” said Clay, “No offence but you been a little out of it lately.”

“Yeah, Rai,” Kimiko chimed in, “we thought one of us could do it while you got a little rest.”

“I’ve had  _ months _ to rest,” said Raimundo, “besides, it’s my duty as Shoku Warrior.”

“It is all of our duty,” Omi’s voice was resolute, “and just because you are leader does not make you responsible for every decision.”

“Oh  _ sure _ , Omi,” said Raimundo, “what do you think this is, a delicacy?”

Raimundo’d meant it as a joke. It felt like he meant it as a joke. But now that he was in the vault, with the egg in the sphere, it was slowly starting to feel like maybe there was more venom than he intended.

Maybe he should have at least lied down, even though he knew that sleep would be out of the question. However much energy he’d absorbed from the egg, he’d spent more than he’d received, and all that he had left was a slightly fluttering heart and a sickly feeling in his veins. 

Right now, however, he’d take the time to be alone. The three hour shift would be enough to sort himself out, that he was sure of. He sat with his notebook in his lap and a pen in his hand. On the earliest blank page, he had written the following:

_ THINGS I KNOW ABOUT THE NIGHTMARES: _

  * __They suck completely__


  * _Everyone always dies_


  * _The Shadow of Fear is still in the vault_



That didn’t feel like enough to go on. Tapping his pen on the side of his knee eventually brought him to a few more bullet points.

  * __Evil doesn’t usually do the same plan twice__


  * _But they could?_


  * _Chase hasn’t done this yet_



That didn’t seem to bring him anywhere useful. Chase would have just kept the Wu instead of leaving it in the vault. He spent another few minutes staring at the paper, a thought too stupid to write bouncing around his brain. Eventually, he rolled his head in defeat and scribbled it out anyway.

  * __It’s probably not me__



The egg seemed to be watching him, in the same strange unnerving way that it had in the vault. Raimundo turned his back to it, hunching over his notebook. Which was silly, not like it had eyes.

  * __It can’t be the dragon__


  * _Or Dojo_


  * _Or Kim or Clay either_



His pen tapping got more rapid, the beat becoming uneven. He didn’t like where his thoughts were taking him. He wrote down one more sentence, then paused.

Raimundo was trying to eliminate options, try to narrow down the impossible to see where the possible could lie. But following that trail had led him somewhere he didn’t want to be, but had trouble denying. In a way, now, he was trying to solve two mysteries and the thought that they could be connected sent a chill down his spine.

It wasn’t likely. 

But it  _ was _ possible.

He crossed out the sentence he just wrote, and revised it.

  * ~~__It’s not Omi.__~~


  * _It’s_ probably _not Omi._



He slammed the notebook shut, and glanced back at the dragon. It was trying to roll down the stairs, like a hamster in a ball. When it was unable to roll down the stairs, it backed up, and then threw itself against the Sphere, violently rolling against the wall, then throwing itself against the opposite side.

Raimundo grabbed the sphere, positioning himself the block the roll. “Hey, knock it off! What’re you trying to do, knock the place down?!”

As Raimundo held the rampaging egg in place, his notebook fluttered, unnoticed, to the bottom of the vault.


End file.
